


His Brother's Keeper

by aliitvodeson



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Disability, Gen, Mental Disintegration, Other, Post-Reichenbach, Reichenbach AU, Work In Progress, adults with special needs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:50:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2016891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliitvodeson/pseuds/aliitvodeson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock had fully intended to leave London behind completely. He had a new life in America, Moriarty's web had been dealt with, and he's even begun taking cases again. Even John, monitored by Mycroft, seems to be adapting to his absence. Everything has worked out as he could have hoped. And then, with one text and six words, he is called back to England.<br/>"You're brother's been asking for you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm super excited to be actually posting this. Me and my friend Julie plotted this fanfiction out last year at the camp we worked at. We support adults with special needs, and are both huge fans of Sherlock. So naturally, the talk about Sherlock's older brother (in ACD canon there is one) came up. And the idea for this fanfiction was born.  
> It's taken me awhile to find the right way to approach the issues broached in this fanfiction, and I thank you for the patience that will be needed as readers.

His first word had barely been documented. Only in his mother's mind does proof of that word exist. There was no camera around to catch that magical moment, no doting father to prompt him into speech. Simple memories are all that keeps the first utterance of adult speech around. A memory of a soft autumn day, the leaves just turning from green to red, a mother and her son out for a walk along one of the many paths that littered the family estate. Her first born, her pride and joy, her little darling boy. One year old and already with those bright blue-grey eyes that took in everything that passed in front of him with an alertness that betrayed his young age.

In the years to come, Victoria Holmes would look back on that day with a smile of fondness and a wistful expression on her face. She'd carried young Dancwen in a stroller, the top open to the fresh breeze coming off the river. When Dancwen, never Danny or Dan at this point, that would come later, pointed excitedly at the falling leaves, she'd stopped with the intention of letting him out to play.

"Momma." It had come so suddenly. The word had simply escaped his lips as he reached towards her hair.

"Yes. Yes, it's Momma." Oh, how Albert would scorn to hear her repeat such a childish term. But it's was her son's first word, and she could indulge the boy.

Dancwen Holmes learned speech rapidly for the first year and a half of his speaking years. Both Albert and Victoria taught him words beyond the simple sounds he picked up from them and the servants. Words like science, politics, experiment. The servants were under orders to correct his grammar and pronunciation. "My son shall be the world's greatest orator," Albert proclaimed proudly when the boy gave forth a perfect sentence at two and a half months.

Afterwards she would think that they must have done something wrong. Taught him too much, not letting him learn at his own pace but at theirs. No matter how much the doctors assured her and Albert that the condition was nothing from family or environment, Victoria always blamed herself. When her younger sons were born, five years and then twelve years later, she left them to learn speech on their own. For she had ruined her first born's life with this act, she could not likewise ruin theirs.

For it was not long after he had said that first, beautiful sentence that Dancwen simply fell silent. Less and less words escaped his mouth, he refused to rise to the challenge of new words and delightful sounds. In the midst of doctor's visits and professional consultations, the truth slowly became worse and worse. Dancwen stopped playing his bright eyes dull and listless. He would spend hours simply looking at the ceiling, his mouth stubbornly shut, his whole being not reacting to the calls of his mother or shouts of his father.

The second son of Victoria only heard his older brother speak three times: the youngest Holmes boy never once experienced the joy of playing word games with Dancwen. When the boys were older and headed off to school while Dancwen remained behind at the estate, they hardly mentioned their older brother. It was a topic one felt too difficult to explain, the other preferred to leave such painful subjects at home.

Dancwen's words were always a treasured thing in the household, grabbed onto and held tight. Rarely did any moment of lucidity go undocumented. His words at thirty were recorded in half a dozen methods that his first had not.


	2. The First Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John relieves an invitation for a Christmas party at the Holmes mansion.

The snow is falling, and Mrs. Hudson puts on the radio, just to fill the silence that has taken over her flat. The first song, a soft female voice rising through the floorboards, brings tears to John's eyes. They played White Christmas last year, when there had been song on the ground and a man with a violin at the window. He doesn't tell Mrs. Hudson to turn off the music though. The silence has been hurting him as much as her. He closes his eyes. The first song finishes and some how he feels the emptiness in the flat all the more for the silence that has taken him over. He longs for more music. He hates the next song that comes on, and the one after it as well. He steps outside to get his mail.

The stone walls of the flat building muffle the music.

In with the rest of his junk mail is a simple postcard, with a picture of a country cottage in winter time on the front and an invitation on the back. John reads it with a shaking hand, then sits on the couch and sets about responding in some manner that doesn't make him seem crazy. He can't imagine being invited to this, not so soon after Sherlock died. Not after Sherlock died at all. He never met anyone from Sherlock's family, beyond Mycroft. Not even at the funeral. But they have sent him an invitation to their family Christmas party and all John can think about is how Sherlock arranged the parties at Baker street so that he wouldn't have to go to his mother's parties. John writes his acceptance on a card he finds lying under the sofa, hoping that Mrs. Holmes won't notice the discolouration on the back and knowing that she absolutely will. 

Over the next week, he buys a new suit for the party, and shaves off the ragged growth on his chin.

He wears his old jeans that day anyways.

He presses his finger to the buzzer and steps back from the door, bouncing on his heels in his nervousness. The house is intimidating, a rising monument to Victorian architecture. The grounds, spreading out behind John with the winding drive as a tribute to the river beside him, is even more intimidating. The snow has been cleared off all the walks, and as the cab had pulled up along the drive John had seen the gardens at the back of the house, equally covered in snow and equally cleared of snow on the pathways. The door swings open and John does not know who the woman pulling him into a hug is, but she smells like Sherlock and he nearly cries then and there.

When she brings him inside the living room and her husband shakes his hand and tells him how sorry they all are, John has to hide his face in his hands. It is too much.

The small man curled up on the carpet is unmistakable. There is the hair, and the high cheekbones. Even with half of the man's face hidden in the carpet, John can not look away from the thin frame. He knows that shoulder line, the delicate curls hanging around the man's ears. He steps forward, a name on his lips.

Mrs. Holmes speaks before he can. "I'm sorry John. I know he never liked to speak about this."

The man on the floor raises his head.

The curls are entirely Sherlock's, black and perfect. The face too, bears more than a passing resemblance. John knows why he thought it was Sherlock-his cheekbones, hope, the hair-but when he can see all of the man's face he knows that it will never be Sherlock to him again. Mycroft's nose, and a gentle set of lips that is entirely different from the Holmes brothers that John knows.

“Danny, this is John Watson. Sherlock’s friend.”

The man lying on the floor, knees tucked to his chest like a child, shows no sign of hear the older woman. But when John steps forward and bends down, the man begins to hum, high pitched and loud. John stops where he is. He remembers the one family at the clinic, with the autistic daughter. There is a similarity to her that makes John stop moving. But this is not some girl with a tenacity to hit him. This is a full grown man, who looks like Sherlock. A man who stops humming with Mrs. Holmes walks around John and holds out her hands for a hug.

“We named him Dancwen,” she tells John in a quiet voice. “Neither of the boys liked talking about it at school. Didn’t want to explain it. I wasn’t surprised when Mycroft told me that you didn’t know, though I was a little bit disappointed. My boys have always been so stubborn.”

Dancwen, John notices, is dressed in normal enough clothes, though his shoes are Velcro and his trousers have slipped to reveal a brief. A brief. It’s then the reality of what John is seeing crashes in on him. The man before him, humming happily as he lays back down on the carpet, is special needs. Sherlock and Mycroft never mentioned him. They’re embarrassed probably. The emotions hit John the way people’s lives hit Sherlock.

“I wish he’d told me.” John stands back; the humming sounds happy now. “H-How old is Dancwen?”

Mrs. Holmes smiles, the friendly sort of smile that her sons were always trying and never managing. “Call him Danny, dear, everyone does.” Still smiling at John, she takes off her knitted shrug and hands it down to her son. Danny curls up around it like a dog around it’s pups. “He’s turning forty seven this summer.”

Forty seven. John feels but does not hear the air slide out of his lungs and past his lips. Twelve years older than Sherlock. Twelve years, and yet Danny was so much different. How could Sherlock not tell John about this brother? How could Sherlock tell John at all?


End file.
